Читать книгу The Stars Never Rise - Rachel Vincent - Страница 15

“Pregnant …?” My voice sounded hollow, and when Melanie nodded, I sank to the floor on legs that would no longer hold me up.

No.

My sister climbed out of the cart, then knelt next to me on the floor, wrinkling her navy slacks and her drenched white blouse. “Nina, say something. I don’t know what to do.”

“Are you sure?” I grabbed her hand and squeezed it, looking for any sign of doubt in her eyes.

“Pretty sure. I missed last month entirely, and I’ve been feeling sick all week.” She sniffled and swiped one hand across her dripping nose again. “Not just in the morning, though. Kinda off and on all day.”

But for one long moment, I could only blink at her, and even once I was capable of speech, the words seemed to get stuck on my tongue. “How …? Who …?” She looked at the floor, and my eyes narrowed. “Adam Yung?” I demanded in a harsh whisper, and she nodded miserably. “Melanie, how did you think you’d get away with this? You knew your physical was coming up, and even if you hadn’t gotten pregnant, they can tell when you’ve lost your virginity!”

I could get away with having sex. Because I’d been declared unfit to procreate, then rendered unable to procreate, the Church no longer cared whether I preserved my virtue, so long as I still presented a facade of innocence and purity to the world.

I had gotten away with it, several times in the months following my sterilization, when my anger at the Church couldn’t be controlled without an outlet. I’d met in the dark, in the middle of the night, with boys who would hardly meet my gaze in school. A private screw-you to the system that had defined my future without so much as a “Hey, Nina, what would you like out of life?”

I wasn’t sure I wanted kids, and I certainly hadn’t been sure at fifteen. But I was damn sure I didn’t want anyone else making that decision for me.

Had I done this? Had Melanie seen my months of rebellion—back when I’d had time for such things—and assumed that what had worked for me would work for her too?

“We weren’t really thinking about that,” my sister said in response to a question I’d almost forgotten I’d asked. “We weren’t really thinking about anything. We were just … I love him, and he loves me, and it just happened, Nina!”

“Once?” I sat on my heels to keep my slacks off the laundry room floor. “You got pregnant the first time?” Not that that mattered. Once was enough.

Studying in the basement, my ass.

Melanie shook her head, and more tears filled her eyes. “We tried to stop. We knew it was wrong, but it didn’t feel wrong.”

“How does it feel now?” I demanded. Fornication was a sin. Melanie wouldn’t have been the first fifteen-year-old to present a torn hymen at her annual physical, and if the whispers in the bathroom were accurate, several of my own classmates had already lived to tell that tale. They were sterilized, of course, and they’d been punished privately because our school didn’t want smudges on its record any more than the offenders wanted to be outed as sinners.

But Melanie was giving them no choice. A pregnancy couldn’t be hidden by a school uniform. Not for long, anyway.

My head spun with the details, and the consequences, and the potential outcomes, but in that deluge of possibilities, I couldn’t see a single good way out of this. Not one.

“Does Adam know?” I rubbed my forehead, trying to fend off the pressure growing behind it. We were screwed.

She shook her head. “I couldn’t tell him. I just kept ignoring it, hoping I was wrong, until I saw the calendar and remembered about the physicals.”

“Unlicensed pregnancy is forbidden, Melanie. For—”

“Please don’t say ‘Fornication is a sin.’ “ More tears rolled down her swollen cheeks. “I know fornication is a sin. Please don’t be mad at me right now, Nina. I need your help.”

“I’m not mad.” I was furious. I was so angry I could hardly think, but I couldn’t deny my own hypocrisy, and being mad at Melanie wouldn’t help either of us, so I pushed my anger back. Way back. All the way to the back of my mind, where anger at my mother festered, rotting our thin familial bond. “I just …” I didn’t know what to do. For the first time in my life, I had no clue how to get Melanie out of trouble. “You can’t have this baby, Mellie.” I squeezed her hand when her tears started falling faster. “You know you can’t have this baby.”

There were places women could go to fix that particular problem. I didn’t know where any of those places were, but I could find out. Maybe we could put Mellie’s physical off if I told them she was sick, and then when she showed up for the makeup physical, we’d only have to deal with the fornication issue.

We could survive fornication, even if the Church took custody of us and split us up. But fornication, unlicensed pregnancy, disobeying a Church official, and any other sins they uncovered when they looked into our living situation …?

The more sins they charged her with, the greater the chance of a conviction.

But one look at my sister’s tear-streaked face told me she wouldn’t even consider what I saw as our only option.

“No! Nina, there’s a person in here.” She pressed one small fist against her flat belly, and something deep inside me cracked open and fell apart. “It’s a baby—or it will be. It’s my baby, and it’s real, and it’s defenseless, and I’m going to be a great mother.”

But it wasn’t that simple. She was too scared and confused to see the real problem. “We don’t have a soul for him, Melanie.”

“Or her. It could be a girl.” Her words came out in broken, halting syllables half choked by wrenching sobs.

“The gender doesn’t matter if the baby doesn’t live.”

“Maybe Mom will …” She couldn’t finish the sentence, and I couldn’t finish it for her. The thought was too horrible to voice.

“You know she won’t.” Our mother was only thirty-nine years old, and I couldn’t say for sure why she’d ever had kids in the first place. The chances of her giving up her life—miserable as it was lately—for an illegally conceived grandchild she would never see were slim to none.

“One of Adam’s parents, then. They love him. They won’t want his baby to die.”

She was right. But Adam’s parents weren’t much older than our mom, and … “Do you really want to take one of his parents away from him? Away from Penny?” Adam’s little sister was only twelve—way too young to lose one of her parents and half of the family’s income. “Would you really make them decide who should die to pay for a mistake you and Adam made?”

She looked crushed by the realization that that was exactly what she’d be doing. “What about the public registry?”

“Melanie, that’s no guarantee!” And I wasn’t even sure they’d put her baby on the list if the Church declared her unfit to procreate. They would never make her end the pregnancy—in fact, they wouldn’t let her—but they wouldn’t hesitate to let the child die a natural, soulless death.

“Then I’ll pledge to the Church!” she cried, swiping tears from her cheeks with both hands, and I glanced nervously at the closed laundry room door. We couldn’t hide forever, but we couldn’t afford to be discovered before we had a plan. And my sister pledging to join the Church was not a good plan.

Sure, if she pledged, they’d put her baby on the very short, very elite Church registry—a list of elderly Church officials who were ready to give up their souls to support the next generation of life. But then they’d take the baby, not as a ward, like the orphans, but as an ecclesiastic dedication. A human tithe. In another town. She would never see him again, and at eighteen, he would be ordained without choice, his soul to be paid for with lifelong service to the Church by both mother and child.

“You don’t want to pledge, Mellie,” I said, though I couldn’t make myself voice the reasons.

She wiped her eyes again and looked at me with more determination than I’d ever seen from her. “What I don’t want is to let this baby die.”

I stared at her. I wasn’t sure I recognized my own sister in that moment. Melanie had changed in the hour since we’d walked to school. She was still young and impulsive, and still wasn’t quite thinking things through, but at some point she’d come to value her unborn child’s life more than her own, and that made her a better mother than ours had ever been.

“I can do this, Nina,” she said, and that determination I’d seen in her eyes echoed in her voice. “I know you think I never take anything seriously, and I mess everything up, but I can do this, and if you’ll help me, I may not have to join the Church. I’ll do whatever you say.” She took my hand in both of hers. “I’ll do all the laundry, and the dishes, and anything else you need me to do, if you’ll just help me keep my baby. Please, Nina!”

She was too young. We couldn’t guarantee her baby a soul. Even if it lived and the Church let her keep it, we couldn’t afford to feed and clothe a baby. And I wouldn’t be able to pledge and become a teacher, because Melanie couldn’t do this on her own. To give her baby even a chance at life, I would have to spend the rest of mine in a factory.

I knew I should say no. But I couldn’t.

“Okay. I’ll help you. But you have to understand that there are no guarantees. If the Church decides to prosecute”—and they would if Deacon Bennett saw her as an embarrassment to the town—”you could serve serious time.” Unpaid prison workers were the nation’s largest source of factory labor, producing everything from paper cups and clothing to car parts and traffic signals, in every plant that had survived the war. “And even if you don’t go to jail, you’ll have at least two convictions on your record.” One for fornication, one for conceiving a child without a license. “Those’ll keep you out of college.” Which was a real shame, because Melanie was smart. She had a head for numbers and a memory for facts and dates. “And they may still take the baby. But I’ll do the best I can.”

My sister threw her arms around me, sobbing her thanks onto my shoulder, where her tears and snot mixed with the rainwater already soaked into my shirt.

I held her for a moment, trying to squelch the sudden certainty that I’d just nominated us both for execution. Then I let her go, hyperaware of the clock ticking over the door. We’d been sequestered in the laundry room for ten minutes. It didn’t seem possible for so much to have changed in less than a quarter of an hour, but clocks don’t lie.

Melanie sniffled. “So … now what?”

“You go home.” That was the only part of the plan I had worked out so far. I waved one hand at the utility sink in the corner. “Wash your face, and don’t cry anymore or you’ll attract attention. Go out through the admin building so you won’t have to climb the fence, but do not get caught in here. Follow the tracks home so no one will see you on the street either. I’ll tell Anabelle you’re sick—that you ran out so you wouldn’t throw up on the floor—and see if she can buy us some time by scheduling a makeup physical. But they’re going to find out, Melanie.”

We’d just have to make sure they found out on our terms.

My sister and I parted ways in the hall, where I watched her sneak around a corner, and then I headed in the other direction, letting my wet shoes squeak on the tile floor in an attempt to cover the sound of hers. If I got caught, I could say I was looking for her. If she got caught …

She couldn’t get caught.

When I got to the quad again, the rain had almost stopped, but poor Matthew Mercer was still soaked, and this time he didn’t look up when I passed him or when a neat line of second graders filed past us both on the way to the worship center.

Back in the gym, I pulled Anabelle aside and told her that Melanie was sick, and that I’d told her to go home and rest. When I asked if she could schedule a makeup physical, she looked suspicious but promised to try.

I wanted to sneak out and follow my sister home, where I could consider our options without the distraction of teachers and classes and other students whispering—some outright asking—about Melanie’s breakdown. But if I snuck out, my absence would be just as obvious as my sister’s.

During third period, the front office sent a note for me to deliver to her after school. It was a formal notice for her to present herself for discipline first thing in the morning.

After school, I stuffed the discipline notice into my satchel along with my books and walked home the long way, which led me past the Grab-n-Go. I stood across the street for several minutes, watching through the window for Dale, the assistant manager, to take his afternoon break. That would leave Ruth at the register, and Ruth never looked up from her crossword puzzle long enough to notice that I’d paid for the gum on the counter but not the food in my satchel.

I hadn’t come for food this time, and that fact made me even more determined to avoid Dale.

When he disappeared into the back room, I jogged across the street and into the store, wishing for the millionth time that there was no bell to announce my presence. Ruth looked up, focused on me for half a second while I perused the selection of candy, then went back to her puzzle.

As usual, I hesitated in front of the locked display case of cola, where a single bottle had been gathering dust for most of the last year because no one in the neighborhood could afford it. Then I drifted silently toward the half aisle of toiletries and over-the-counter medications while the screen mounted at the front of the store played the news.

“The badly mutilated corpse of April Walden, the teen who went missing from Solace two days ago, was discovered in the badlands south of New Temperance yesterday, less than a month after her seventeenth birthday. Church officials believe she was killed by a degenerate.”

“No shit …,” I mumbled, wandering slowly down the aisle, listening for any mention of the degenerate killed fifty feet from where I stood.

“Still no word on why Walden left the safety of Solace’s walls, but one high-ranking Church official ventured to conjecture that she was, in fact, possessed before she ever left the town.”

After that, the reporter transitioned to the latest death toll from the front lines in Asia, where brave soldiers and elite teams of exorcists were steadfastly beating back the last of the Unclean in the name of the Unified Church. As they’d been doing all my life. The location sometimes changed as one area was pronounced cleared and troops moved to cleanse another region, but the battles themselves were always the same.

We always won, but it was never easy. Losses were inevitable. Sacrifices would be honored and remembered.

I’d taken three more steps toward a narrow white box on the top shelf when a familiar six-note melody signaled the switch to the local news, which played on the hour, every hour, to keep citizens informed about the happenings close to home. The happenings the Church wanted us to know about, anyway.

I’d sold our television almost two years before, when I realized I’d rather have a functioning microwave than hear the same pointless recitation of “news” over and over, night after night.

But this time I listened closely. A degenerate inside the town walls would definitely make the local news, and with any luck, the report would tell me how close the police were to identifying the mystery boy and girl who had fled the scene that morning.

“Church officials are on the lookout for a group of adolescent offenders last spotted near New Temperance, wanted for truancy, heresy, and theft. Reports indicate that the group has between three and five members, only two of whom have been identified at this time. Reese Cardwell is seventeen years old. He has light skin, brown hair, and brown eyes, but his most prominent feature is his size. Cardwell is six feet six inches tall, and his weight is estimated at over two hundred and thirty pounds.”

The school picture they flashed on the screen could have been any boy at my school. He looked young and friendly, and you can’t tell much about a person’s size from a head shot.

“Devi Dasari has dark hair and eyes and is estimated to be five feet seven inches tall. Demonic possession is suspected for all members of the group, but unconfirmed at this time. Citizens are asked to report any suspicious activity and unfamiliar faces to your local Church leaders.”

Fugitives in New Temperance … And if the fugitives were suspected of possession, there would be exorcists in New Temperance too.

I’d seen both suspicious activity and unfamiliar faces that very morning, and New Temperance was too small and dull a town for that to be coincidence. But one of the faces I’d seen had belonged to a degenerate—definitely not a teenager—and the other belonged to an exorcist too young and unbranded to be ordained by the Church.

Why wasn’t the news reporting the dead degenerate? Were the possibly possessed teen fugitives unconnected to the demon that attacked me? Was their story big enough to eclipse reports of a degenerate inside the town walls?

That was almost too far-fetched a thought to process. Obviously, the news was omitting some relevant—and no doubt important—piece of the story. Probably the piece that would connect the dots.

But on the bright side, there was no report of a fifteen-year-old pregnant dissident arrested for disobeying the direct order of a Church official.

Near the middle of the aisle, I took the box I needed from the top shelf, wiped dust from it with my hand, then slid it into my satchel. At the end of the aisle, I turned left, heading toward the gum for my legitimate purchase. But I froze two steps later when Dale stepped into my path.

“Whatcha got there, Nina?” he asked softly so Ruth wouldn’t hear.

“Nothing yet.” I pointed past him at the display of chewing gum.

“Open your bag.”

Shit! “Not today, Dale. Please.” The word tasted sour, but I was willing to beg. I couldn’t leave the store without what I’d come for, and I couldn’t let him see what that was.

“Nothin’s free,” he whispered, stepping so close I could smell the coffee on his breath. “You gotta pay, one way or another.” His pointed glance at Ruth was a threat to rat me out. He knew as well as I did that there were no more than three coins in my pocket—nowhere near enough for what I’d taken, even if he didn’t know what that was. “Your choice.”

But it wasn’t, really. It was never my choice.

He gestured for me to precede him down the aisle, and I did—I knew the way—my stomach churning harder with every step. At the back of the store, he led me past the grimy restrooms and into a small supply closet, where he held the door open for me in a farce of chivalry.

I took a deep, bitter breath, then stepped inside and shoved a mop bucket with my foot to make room. Dale came in after me, and I pressed my back against the wall to put as much space between us as possible. He pulled the door closed and fumbled for the switch in the dark. A single bulb overhead drenched the closet in weak yellow light, casting ominous shadows beneath his features, making him look scarier than he really was.

Dale was a dick, and a stupid dick at best. But he wasn’t scary. Demons were scary. The Church was scary. Dale was just an opportunistic asshole in a position of minor power.

“Give me the bag.”

I set my satchel on the floor and pinned it against the wall with my feet. He couldn’t know. No one could know.

“Fine. Take it off.”

My teeth ground together as I unbuttoned my blouse. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see him, but I couldn’t avoid hearing the way his breathing changed. The way his inhalations hitched, his exhalations growing heavier and wetter with each button that slid through its hole.

“Take it off,” he repeated when I reached the last button.

Eyes still closed, I let the material slide off my shoulders, down to my elbows. His feet shuffled on the concrete floor, and I squeezed my eyes shut tighter. A second later, his fingers were there, greedy and eager. They pushed at the remaining material, shoving my bra up, squeezing, pinching.

I let it happen. I had no other way to pay.

But when his fingers fumbled with the button of my pants, my eyes flew open. “No.”

His hands stilled but didn’t retreat. “It’s not just a can of soup this time, is it? Or a loaf of bread? Whatever’s in that bag today, I think you really want it. I think you need it. Well, guess what I need….”

He tried for the button again, and I shoved him back, then clutched the open halves of my blouse to my chest. “I said no.”

“You want me to call the police?”

I made a decision then. One I couldn’t have made a day earlier. “Call them. I’ll tell them how you’ve been charging a poor, hungry schoolgirl for a year and a half, corroding my morals and defiling my innocence. We’ll see who they arrest.”

His hands fell away and his gaze hardened, staring into mine. Trying to decide whether or not to call my bluff—and any other day, it would have been a bluff, because I couldn’t afford for the police and my mother to meet. But thanks to Melanie’s collection of offenses, they were going to meet anyway, sooner or later, and if picking “sooner” would keep Dale’s hands off me, so be it.

I suffered a minor moment of panic when I realized that if I had him arrested, there would be no more free food. But then, it was never really free in the first place, was it?

“This arrangement is over.” I tugged my bra back into place, trying to forget the feel of his fingers on my skin. I buttoned my shirt while he glared at me, and then I threw my satchel over my shoulder and pushed past him to the door.

I marched to the front of the store and paid for my gum. Ruth didn’t even notice my untucked shirt.

“If I ever see you in here again, I will call the police,” Dale growled through clenched teeth as I reached for the front door.

I stopped with the door halfway open and turned back to look at him. “If you ever see me in here again, you’ll need them.”